Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
The Gun Deaths We Donโt Hear About
Guns killed 570 Minnesotans last year, the highest rate of gun deaths in our state in 20 years. The rise in gun homicides, a serious concern, has been well-documented. Whatโs less discussed is the rise in gun suicides, especially in Greater Minnesota. There were more than twice as many suicides committed with guns last year (393) as there were homicides (164), Christopher Ingraham at the Minnesota Reformer reports, looking at statistics recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while the homicide rate is greater in the Twin Cities metro, the suicide rate outside that area is shockingโmore than 200 of those suicides were committed outstate. In other words, nine out of every 100,000 Minnesotans outside the Twin Cities metro took their lives with a gun last year.
This is hardly a purely Minnesotan problem. Even before COVID, researchers were tracing the nationโs decreasing life expectancy to a rise in โdeaths of despairโ among white working-age Americans without four-year degrees. (The category includes suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver disease.) And considering that folks who think they have a future donโt typically go around shooting one another, it doesnโt seem like much of a stretch to call the homicides โdeaths of despairโ as well.
Hi, No, the Pandemic Is Not Over
While our student loan balances are happier with Joe Biden than they were previously, we gotta say the old fella is really not cut out to discuss public health without the aid of a very carefully phrased message on a teleprompter. โThe pandemic is over,โ the President announced on 60 Minutes last night. โNot so fast,โ the sewage of the Twin Cities responds. Last Friday, Bring Me the News reports, the Metro Council released its latest wastewater sample data, an important measure of COVID-19 prevalence, and the viral load (lol, load) of COVID entering had risen by 36% since the prior week. A big contributor to that increase: Schools are back in session, and without masking policies this year. The omicron subvariant BA.5 remains dominant, but a tiny percentage of (another!) variant, BA.2.75, was located as well. While COVID death rates are down to the single digits here (with โonlyโ 7 people dying a week), they were even lower last summerโand remember what happened once we all went back inside.
Lawsuit: THC Legalization Is Screwing with Medical Marijuanaโs Profit Margins
In 2015, when Vireo Health landed one of two contracts to provide medical marijuana in Minnesota, it was a big cash boon. If you were one of the lucky few to have a โgreenโ card, youโd probably be dropping a bundle at one of their Green Goods dispensaries. But now that we have accidental legal edibles, and pretty much every place in town can sell $8 Delta-9 packets, fewer people are milking the medical cash cow. And that, according to Vireoโs lawsuit against the state, is discrimination. โThe problem is that hemp-derived edibles that have recently been legalized in Minnesota do not have the same regulation, oversight, testing, and customer eligibility limitations as the medical cannabis-derived edibles sold by Vireo,โ the lawsuit states.
It doesnโt sound like theyโre trying to harsh anyoneโs mellow, however. The lawsuit alleges that THC-derived edibles and their medical cannabis-derived edibles are โchemically identical,โ and so they shouldnโt be regulated differently from the โBirthday Cake Indica Stoned Zoneโ gummies you get at the gas station down the store. Vireo isnโt the only one losing money to unregulated gummies; some estimate that failing to tax edibles is costing Minnesota about $46 million this year.
Petite Leรณn Gets Some Big Recognition
The New York Times just released its list of the 50 best restaurants in America right now, and you better believe Petite Leรณn is on there. โThe chef Jorge Guzmรกn was born and raised in the Yucatรกn, and that regionโs cuisine animates a number of his arresting dishes, including al pastor pork collar, charred broccolini with mole verde, and ancho chile-black garlic marinated bavette steak with a bright piquillo pepper sauce,โ Brett Anderson writes of the south Minneapolis spot from Guzmรกn, Travis Serbus, and Benjamin Rients. Two Minneapolis restaurants landed on the list last year: Sooki & Mimi, from Ann Kim, who was just prominently featured on Chefโs Table: Pizza, and Owamni, from Sean Sherman and Dana Thompson, the former of whom was just the subject of an extraordinarily long New Yorker profile. In other wordsโฆ very fine company. โThis team has been kicking ass since our doors opened for take out and they keep kicking ass!โ the restaurantโs celebratory Insta post reads, and we couldnโt agree more. Get the burger! Get the mussels! Get the stuffed piquillo peppers!